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JOHN STUART MILL 



BY 



FREDERIC HARRISON 







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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 

1896 



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Copyright, 1896, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Nortoooti -yjressB 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



II 



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JOHN STUART MILL. 1 

Almost a generation has passed since a most strenuous 
and magnanimous spirit was laid to rest in the cemetery of 
Avignon along the Rhone. In that majestic and melan- 
choly spot, beneath dark pines and beside his beloved 
wife, lies John Stuart Mill, one of the most intense 
workers, one of the most upright spirits of our age. The 
age itself, we must admit, has been flowing on, like the 
Rhone to the sea, and has left the philosopher at peace in 
his distant grave. His work was completed, he himself 
said with his dying breath ; and his most devoted friends 
will not dare to claim for him the influence and the 
reputation he undoubtedly possessed some thirty years 
ago. There are few to-day who will re-echo quite literally 
all that John Morley said in the two fine pieces written on 
the death of Mill in 1873, now to be read in the third 
volume of his Miscellanies. His tribute, if deepened into 
rare passion and pathos by the unexpected loss of a friend 
and master, was substantially just and true. He did not 
say too much when he wrote : * A strong and pure light 
is gone out, the radiance of a clear vision and a beneficent 
purpose ; ' ' We have lost a great teacher and example of 
knowledge and virtue." 

It is, however; obvious that the influence of John Stuart 
Mill has been waning in the present generation. They who 
would use the language just cited are not so many as they 

1 Copyright in England, i.e. the United Kingdom. 
B 1 



D I 



2 JOHN STUART MILL. 

were, nor are they themselves in so strong a force. It 
was said at the time of his death that with the reputation 
of Mill would stand or fall the reputation of a whole 
generation of Englishmen. Something of that kind has 
already happened. The young lions of to-day, whether in 
politics, literature, or philosophy, are very far from caring 
much for what was said 'by them of old time,' i.e. in the 
early manhood of their own fathers. Their motto is, 
rjfieis fiev irarepcov fjuey a/nv/JLOves ev^d/JLeO' elvai. They 
are not familiar with the reputations of the last genera- 
tion, and are apt to wonder how these were made. If the 
reputation of Mill has waned, the reputation of a whole 
school of leading minds of his generation has waned also. 
It was the dominant school of the ' sixties ' : it is dominant 
no more. 

For this reason it is much to be wished that John Morley 
would now give us that estimate of Mill which in 1873 he 
said would one day have to be made, and that Life which 
we have so long awaited. But since he is otherwise em- 
ployed (alas ! for letters, alas ! for philosophy), a few words 
may be permitted to tell the younger generation wherein 
lay the influence over us elders of Mill's character and 
mind some thirty years ago. For my own part, I can pre- 
tend to none of the qualifications which so eminently meet 
in Mr. Morley. Though I knew Mill in the later years of 
his life, I could not in any sense lay claim to his intimacy. 
With very deep respect for him, I was in no way his dis- 
ciple. My own education, habits, tastes, and temperament 
were so utterly different from his as to awaken in me 
the interest of contrast and surprise. I felt, and I still ' 
feel, vehement aversion to some of Mill's cherished ideals 
and doctrines. And so far from his being my master, he 
has attacked my own master with unsparing, and I hold 
unjust, criticism in an important volume. I can, therefore, 



JOHN STUART MILL. 3 

pretend to no claim to speak of him except it may be 
some knowledge of his life, nature, and writings ; a deep 
reverence for his noble qualities; and, I think, a sym- 
pathetic, but real, impartiality of mind. 

These few pages will, of course, not admit of any proper 
criticism of Mill's philosophy, social and moral teaching, 
or his political theories, much less any estimate of his 
character, example, and life. To attempt such a task 
would be to compile a treatise on Logic, another on 
Political Economy, a third on Ethic, a fourth on Politics, 
to say nothing of Metaphysics, Natural Theology, and 
Positivism. ' No such high aim is mine. We shall have 
this in good time, we all trust, when Unionists and 
Nationalists, Imperialists and Englishmen shall have lain 
down together at last. In the meantime, I wish to say a 
few words {caret quia vate sacrd) as to the influence of 
John Stuart Mill upon his own generation — what of it 
is left and is destined to remain — what of it lies silent 
beneath the pine trees and cypresses at Avignon — into 
what form some of the best of it has matured. 

Those who are familiar with the sermon on the death of 
Mill I have cited, will remember how deeply it is charged 
with enthusiasm for the character of the man, more than 
with praise of the work of the teacher. It is, perhaps, 
not easy for those who did not personally know him to do 
justice to all that was great and good in Mill's nature. 
By education and by temperament alike he was one of the 
most reserved and self-contained of men, formally and 
externally not very sympathetic, a Stoic by birth and train- 
ing, cramped from childhood by an unnatural and almost 
inhuman type of discipline, a man to whom the ordinary 
amusements, humours, and passions of life were as utterly 
unknown as were its follies and its vices. His punctilious 
courtesy was such as to seem somewhat pedagogic to the 



4 JOHN STUART MILL. 

ordinary man of the world ; as his generosity was so 
methodically rational as to seem almost ungracious to the 
idle good fellow. Infinitely patient, just, tolerant as he 
was, he was always dominated by the desire to strike the 
balance of right and wrong, of the weight of evidence, 
the force of argument, pro and contra every act under 
observation and every proposition that he heard. This 
produced on the ordinary and casual observer an impres- 
sion of pedantic formalism most undeserved by a nature 
that was the very soul of compassion, benevolence, and 
honour. As his books are curiously devoid of anything 
like literary grace or mastery of the 'pathetic fallacy,' 
the ordinary reader does not easily perceive how much 
enthusiasm, what magnanimity, what tenderness underlies 
the precise statements even of such pieces as the Auto- 
biography, the Subjection of Women, and Liberty : pieces 
which are red-hot within with affection, pity, and passion. 
Some of us were always more attracted by Mill's char- 
acter than by his intellect : we rated his heart above his 
brain : and his failures seem to us mental, not moral per- 
versities. But of his fine and exemplary nature it is 
indeed needless for me to speak. It has had full justice 
done to it by John Morley, who has so well placed Mill's 
distinction in the 'union of stern science with infinite 
aspiration, of rigorous sense of what is real and practi- 
cable with bright and luminous hope.' We listened to him 
just because we found in him a most systematic intellect 
in a truly great heart. 

It must always be borne in mind that Mill essentially 
belonged to a school, that he was peculiarly the product 
of a very marked order of English thinkers, and gave their 
ideas a new development. Coleridge, Carlyle, Ruskin, can 
hardly be said to have been either the sons or the foun- 
ders of any school of thought. John Mill was a singularly 



JOHN STUART MILL. 5 

systematic product of a singularly systematic school of 
philosophers. And he was himself at one time the recog- 
nised head of a group of men of a more or less kindred 
type, with more or less similar aims in mental and social 
science. Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Malthus, 
James Mill, Austin, Grote, Bowring, Roebuck, the philoso- 
phic Radicals of the first Reform era, maintained a real 
filiation of central ideas which reached their complete gen- 
eral systematisation in the earlier writings of John Stuart 
Mill. He in turn worked on general lines with Professor 
Bain, T. Hare, G. H. Lewes, Professor Cairnes, W. E. 
Forster, and Henry Fawcett. John Morley and Leonard 
Courtney still maintain erect the standard of their former 
chief. And Herbert Spencer, building on an analogous 
general ground-plan, has raised a still more encyclopaedic 
system of his own. 

John Morley hardly over-stated the intellectual authority 
of Mill when he wrote, in 1873, that the leading men of 
that day bore traces of his influence, whether as disciples 
or as opponents. The universities (he said), journalism, 
popular reading, and foreign opinion concurred in the 
same testimony. Mill held, moreover, a very unusual 
position — at once head of a school of philosophy, and 
also a most active social reformer, a politician of mark, 
and the inspirer of many practical movements, moral, 
economic, or religious. Hume, Adam Smith, Carlyle, 
Spencer, have each poured forth very pregnant ideas 
upon social problems : but they did not discuss Bills in 
Parliament or found Leagues. It was the essence of 
John Stuart Mill, which he inherited with his Benthamite 
blood and his Utilitarian nurture, to unite ' stern science 
with infinite aspiration,' to regard social philosophy as the 
instrument of social regeneration. If he was far more 
the philosopher than Bentham, he was quite as much as 



O JOHN STUART MILL. 

Bentham the social reformer — far more, than was any 
other follower of Bentham and his school. Mill indeed 
was a compound of Bentham corrected by the ideals and 
thinkers of modern France, especially by Auguste Comte. 

Those who admit that the influence of Mill has been 
waning in the last generation have also to admit that 
the whole school of thought which came to its flower in 
Mill has been waning also in the same time and for the 
same cause. John Mill is not to-day what he was a gen- 
eration ago, because Utilitarianism, Bethanism, Political 
Economy, Radicalism, the Philosophy of experience, moral 
and social Utopias have somewhat gone out of fashion. It 
is rather the school than the man which has lost vogue. 
It is not so much Mill as social science, which ceases to 
absorb the best of the rising generation. We live in an 
age of reversion to more early types — theologico — meta- 
physico — dilemmas and » aristocratic incarnations of the 
beautiful, the wise, and the good. To-day our aspirations 
are imperial, our summum bonum is national glory. War, 
armaments, athletic triumphs fill the souls of our patriotic 
and heroic youth. Philosophy retires into a higher region 
of mist and invisibility. Philosophy must wait and pos- 
sess its soul in peace. 

If the larger doctrinal treatises of Mill have a wider 
teaching power, his distinctive ideas and the keynote of 
his mind and nature are to be found rather in the three 
short popular essays to which he gave his whole soul in 
later life, and whereon he placed his chief claim to leader- 
ship. These are Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism (1863), 
and The Subjection of Women (1869). They are all sum- 
maries of his beliefs, manifestoes, appeals, almost sermons 
in their inward fervour, addressed to the people, con- 
densed and publiseed in sternly popular form. To reach 
the essence of Mill's nature and influence we must 



JOHN STTART MILL. / 

always go straight to these short but typical works of 
his mellow and widowed age. 

The literary history of the Liberty has no small interest. 
It was planned and written as an essay in 1855; in the 
following year, he tells us, that, whilst mounting the steps 
of the Capitol at Rome, he conceived (like Gibbon) the 
idea of making it a book. For two years his wife and 
he worked at it, writing it twice over, and then revising 
every sentence separately and criticising it with their 
joint labour. After years of thought it is published with 
a magnificent dedication to his dead wife as part author 
of the work, inspired 'by her all but unrivalled wisdom.' 
And it may be bought, in sixty-eight pages, for sixteen- 
pence, in which form it has found an immense circulation. 
None of his writings, he says, have been so carefully com- 
posed or so sedulously corrected; and he believes it destined 
to survive longer than anything else that he has written, 
with the possible exception of the Logic. It is destined to 
be, in his own words, ' a philosophic text-book of a single 
truth ' : ' the importance, to man and society, of a large 
variety in types of character, and of giving full freedom to 
human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflict- 
ing "directions.' But this ' single truth ' covers the whole 
field of the relation of the individual to society, i.e. Ethic, 
Sociology, Education, Politics, Law, Manners, and Religion. 
It was, therefore, not strange that a code of maxims thereon 
should absorb the thoughts of two thinkers for many years, 
and, when formulated with a sort of stern passion, should 
strike fire in some millions of brains. 

The ' simple principle ' on which the Liberty expends so 
deep a passion and so much logic is this : that self- 
protection is the sole end for which society is warranted 
in interfering with the liberty of action of the individual. 
This principle is absolute, and includes all intervention, 



8 JOHN STUART MILL. 

physical force, or moral coercion. The independence of 
the individual is absolute, of right, implies the sovereignty 
of the individual over his own mind and body. The only 
part of his conduct for which he is amenable to society is 
that which concerns others. And this liberty includes 
liberty of conscience, liberty of tastes and pursuits, liberty 
of combination. No society can be called free in which 
freedom in all these forms does not exist, absolute and 
unqualified. On this great theme John Mill has com- 
posed a truly monumental manual of acute and impressive 
thoughts. 

It would be futile to attempt in these few pages either a 
defence or a criticism of these far-reaching dogmas. The 
only purpose of this slight essay is to consider how far the 
book of Mill impressed his own age, and how far it can be 
said to have a growing or permanent influence. It is cer- 
tain that the little book' produced a profound impression 
on contemporary thought, and had an extraordinary suc- 
cess with the public. It has been read by hundreds of 
thousands, and, to some of the most vigorous and most 
conscientious spirits amongst us, it became a sort of gospel 
— much as for a time did Rousseau's Social Contract or 
Bentham's Principles of Legislation. It was the code of 
many thoughtful writers and several influential politicians. 
It undoubtedly contributed to the practical programmes 
of Liberals and Radicals for the generation that saw its 
birth ; and the statute book bears many traces of its in- 
fluence over the sphere and duties of government. But 
in the present generation, or, broadly speaking, since the 
great Franco-German war, that influence has been waning, 
and is now at its lowest point. The book is still read, it is 
still admired, it has not been refuted or superseded. But 
much of it is accepted to-day as truth needing no argu- 
ment ; much of it is regarded as quite outside of modern 






JOHN STUART MILL. 9 

conditions ; and a good deal of it is condemned as contrary 
to all the movements and aspirations of the newer schools 
of social reform. Why is this : and what are the parts of 
the book to which these remarks may apply ? 

The second chapter, on ' Liberty of Thought and Dis- 
cussion,' is a masterpiece of wise and generous pleading 
for toleration in opinion, freedom of speech, and liberty of 
conscience. On such a topic it is impossible to be original ; 
but it condenses, with a mastery of touch and a measured 
passion, all the best that has ever been said in defence of 
freedom of opinion, and will stand beside the Areopagitica 
as one of the classics thereon. Few of us are still so much 
in love with Debate as to share in Mill's exaggeration of 
the moral and mental value of discussion itself, so that he 
seems to think that Truth must languish if it were not 
constantly opposed to the counter-stimulation of some 
advocatus Falsi. But Mill would not be himself if he did 
not exaggerate the value of discussion. Yet the argument 
is lighted up with so much moral enthusiasm, and (what is 
so rare in Mill) with so much eloquence, that we easily 
pass over its defects. This chapter also has that typical 
example of free speech in the concrete — the daring and 
somewhat unjust arraignment of Christian morality. But 
even those who are forced to dissent from many of its 
arguments and conclusions will agree with Professor Bain 
that ' it stands as the chief text-book on Freedom of Dis- 
cussion.' 

The third chapter is an ardent plea for individuality as 
an element of well-being, and it is that part of the book 
which makes it a sort of Gospel to many a brave and 
honest soul. No one can gainsay the manly enthusiasm 
and convincing logic which rings in every passage. No 
one outside a Jesuit seminary is ever heard to maintain 
the contrary : but the eloquent and reasoned justification 



IO JOHN STUART MILL. 

of individuality as the essential basis of civilisation does 
certainly give a moral stamina to life, and many a man 
will echo Charles Kingsley's words, that it made him ' a 
clearer-headed, braver-minded man on the spot.' The 
question still remains, whether there has been visible of 
late any waning of individuality in our country or in 
Europe : is there any real danger of its being undervalued ? 
Is it true that ' the danger which threatens human nature 
is the deficiency of personal impulses and preferences ? ' 
There are undoubtedly many molluscous and sheepish 
natures which show such deficiency. There always have 
been, and there always will be ; and if anything can make 
men of them, such a warning as that of Mill on Liberty 
ought to rouse them. But a cool review of the facts, after 
the thirty-eight years that have passed since this appalling 
prophecy was made, compels us to doubt if any such 
danger now ' threatens human nature ' — to doubt if the 
last generation showed any want of ' individuality ' — if 
'individuality' has been growing weaker amongst us in the 
present generation. A very strong and growing opinion 
to-day is that we are still rather over-stocked with ' the 
sovereignty of the individual.' 

It is when we come to the fourth chapter — 'The limits 
of the authority of society over the individual' — that the 
breach grows widest between Mill's absolute individualism 
and the current of contemporary thought. The steady 
tendency of opinion and of policy in the last generation 
has been to strengthen the authority of society over indi- 
viduals. Though it is only a jest to say that 'we are all 
Socialists now,' it is quite true that recent opinion and 
legislation have shown evidence of a socialist bias. Mill 
laid it down as an axiom 'that society has now got the 
better of the individual.' But the dominant, and I will 
add the best, ideals of our time tend still further to assist 



JOHN STUART MILL. I I 

society in getting the better of the individual. Indeed, the 
book on Liberty, so far from helping to curb the authority 
of society and limit its range, coincided with a very strong 
heave throughout the whole of society, from top to bottom, 
to make the authority of society more stringent and more 
ample. The old legal saw ran, 'It is the part of a good 
judge to enlarge his jurisdiction.' The political maxim to- 
day more early runs thus: — 'It is the part of the wise 
legislator to enlarge the authority of law.' And whatever 
be the errors of detail, most thoughtful and patriotic citi- 
zens are not dissatisfied with the general spirit of the rule. 

It does not at all follow that Mill's protests in the cen- 
tral chapter of his book are unnecessary or mischievous. 
His general propositions are far too absolute and doctri- 
naire ; but his practical warnings are invaluable, and his 
practical warnings are invaluable, and his concrete ex- 
amples of State meddling and muddling are full of sense 
and point. Thousands of social reformers and scores of 
politicians are every day clamouring amongst us for repres- 
sive legislation, of which Mill expounds all the folly and 
mischief. Nearly all the examples he gives in the chapter 
on the 'Limits of Authority' and in the chapter on 'Appli- 
cations ' may be gratefully accepted as contributions to po- 
litical philosophy, by those who very much object to Mill's 
general doctrines of non-intervention by society as absolute 
and rigid axioms. Even they must see how many things 
are wise, how many are noble, how many are inspiring in 
this memorable and sagacious book. 

The real weakness of the book, the cause of the aver- 
sion it inspires in so many minds, lies in its ultra-absolute 
dogmatism and its violent exaggeration of individualism. 
Mill's canons as to State intervention are stated with the 
rigid generality of mathematical axioms. His propositions 
bristle with such words as 'absolute,' 'unqualified,' 'of 



12 JOHN STUART MILL. 

right,' 'sovereignty,' 'independence.' Now, the science 
of politics abhors any ' absolute,' 4 unqualified ' rule : it 
uses 'right,' 'sovereignty,' 'independence' only in a legal 
or else in a metaphorical way, never as constituting a rigid 
social law. Mill is far too deeply versed in the history of 
sociology and jurisprudence to appeal to 'rights' with the 
reckless sophistry of so many metaphysicians. But when 
he speaks of a thing as ' not warranted,' as being ' of 
right,' or 'not rightfully,' he is appealing to a theory of 
right. But we know now that sound principles of social 
organisation cannot be founded upon ' rights ' exclusively. 
1 Rights ' are primarily what the law will secure for each, 
and secondarily, what each may think himself worthy to 
receive — an idea on which no doctrine can be framed. 
At bottom, the book on Liberty is an attempt to ascertain 
what are the 'rights' of the individual against the State. 
We know that this is like asking what are the 'rights ' of 
the stomach against the body ? 

An even more fundamental fallacy is the way in which 
' Society ' and ' the State • are used almost as if they were 
interchangeable terms ; and there is a want of steady dis- 
tinguishing between these two throughout the argument. 
The true problem is, not 'what are the limits of the 
authority of Society over the Individual ? ' but ' what are 
the respective limits of State Legislation and Social 
Opinion?' The essence of Social Science is to determine 
the respective provinces of Law, Force, Government on 
the one side, and of Public Opinion, Social Morality, 
Religious Discipline on the other side. The progress of 
civilisation means the restriction of the former power, and 
the correlative enlargement of the latter power : the trans- 
fer of control over individuals from Law to Opinion. As 
the poet says : 

Molto e licito la che qui non lece. 



JOHN STUART MILL. 1 3 

Most thoughtful men agree with the practical examples 
that Mill gives us of the evils of legislative meddling. But 
they are not at all willing to bind the legislative power 
within absolute and cast-iron bonds. There are no abso- 
lute and immutable limits : it is a practical problem, to 
be determined for different societies and various occasions 
in tentative ways, by skilled statesmen, as Aristotle says, 
a>? 6 (f>povL/uo<; opi^ei. 

Most of us to-day deeply revolt against the arbitrary 
dogma — that the only part of conduct for which one is 
amenable to society is that which concerns others ; that, 
as to what concerns oneself, the individual is sovereign. 
That may be the practical limit of legislation, but it is no 
absolute bar to moral and social influence. If a man 
chooses to be a sot, a hog, a savage, a catamite, it is the 
bounden duty of his fellow-men to bring the whole press- 
ure of society to bear on him; of 'society, we say, not 
necessarily of law: that is a question for experts, or states- 
men. What 'part of conduct' concerns the individual 
merely and does not concern others ? No part whatever. 
' Conduct ' is ex hypothesi a. social act. No man's life is, or 
can be, solitary. The whole of ' conduct ' concerns society, 
concerns others ; for human life simply means a continual 
action upon, and reaction from our fellow-beings. 'We 
are all members one of another,' said the greatest of relig- 
ious teachers. And the strength of all religions has lain 
in their bringing home to the believer the continuous and 
inevitable relation of every act and thought of the indi- 
vidual soul to the great Power which he believes to repre- 
sent the sum of things and men around him. Nor can 
any Gospel look to supersede the old Gospels of theology, 
unless it will base itself on the organic unity of the Indi- 
vidual and of Humanity, and discard vain dreams about 
the isolated autonomy of the auto-man. 



14 JOHN STUART MILL. 

What does 'the individual' mean? It is no doubt a 
physical, mechanical, and biological fact. It is a con- 
venient term of logic, and is useful as an abstract idea 
for purposes of analysis or classification. But in sociol- 
ogy there never was, is not, nor can be, any absolute 
'individual' in real life, as a normal human being living; 
a complete and continuous human life. In social science, 
an 'individual' is a term of art, not a substantive organ- 
ism, just as we may speak of the 'nervous system,' or 
'the digestive apparatus' in anatomy, or the 'vertebrate 
series ' in physiology. We cannot find, or even imagine, 
any 'nervous system,' or 'digestive apparatus,' living and 
continuously in function in a normal way, whilst being 
absolutely isolated from the rest of the organism, 'sove- 
reign over itself,' and rigidly absorbed in what 'merely 
concerns itself.' So, in social science, we cannot find, 
we cannot imagine, an 'individual,' living a complete and 
continuous human life, as an individual. Living men and 
women are, and always must be, organic members of a 
social system. Any social philosophy founded upon ' indi- 
viduals ' as such, is founded not on real facts and living 
beings, as we find them and know them, but upon mental 
abstractions, that is, upon postulates, not on realities. Of 
course we can temporarily get individuals isolated, just as 
we can dissect out a nerve, or even a cell, but these iso- 
lated individuals can no more function normally as men 
and women than can the dissected nerve or cell. 

To talk, in social science, about the ' rights of individ- 
uals,' or the separate life of individuals, or the indepen- 
dence of individuals, or the^conduct that solely concerns 
the individual, unless we are using these terms as con- 
venient hypotheses of abstract analysis, not as real, perma- 
nent, substantive facts of nature, is as incoherent as to 
talk of 'the rights' of the nervous system, or the separate 






JOHN STUART MILL. 15 

life of a detached nerve or organ in the dissected body. 
In social science, the smallest substantive organism of 
which society is composed is the Family, not the Indi- 
vidual. A Family, as such, has a rudimentary organic 
life of its own, but an Individual has not. A Family on 
an isolated island can conceivably continue a normal, but 
very low, type of human life, physical, moral, intellectual, 
and progressive, and can transmit somewhat that can be 
called the germs of human civilisation from generation to 
generation. An Individual cannot do this, and therefore 
is not, normally speaking, man at all. The unit of society 
is the Family, not the Individual, which is an abstract 
artifice of analytic classification. And the social science 
which starts with Individuals, not with Families, is based 
on a radical sophism. It is this fundamental error which 
vitiates Mill's book on Liberty, and vitiates indeed the 
whole scheme of Mill's Social Philosophy. 

In the ' Introduction ' to the Liberty Mill does make 
some reference to the difficulty that whatever affects the 
individual may indirectly affect society, and he promises to 
meet this objection in the sequel. But he entirely fails to 
meet it, and he states the difficulty itself far too slightly. 
The attempt to distinguish between conduct which con- 
cerns oneself, and conduct that may remotely concern 
others, is quite fallacious. No distinction can be drawn, 
for human acts are organically inseparable. Not only may 
the conduct of the individual, as concerns himself, affect 
others, but it m ust affect them — the individual never can 
know when, or how, or whom it will affect. The belly 
might as well say to the brain, 'What can it matter to 
you what I take ? ' as the individual can say to his family, 
or even to his countrymen, '.What can it matter to you 
what I eat or drink ? ' Society does not indeed possess 
the all-seeing Eye which the Christian believes to pene- 



l6 JOHN STUART MILL. 

trate the most secret thoughts or acts ; but it has quite 
as real an interest in those thoughts and acts, and they 
far more intimately concern its own well-being. 

The book on Liberty, from beginning to end, is an 
invaluable text-book for the legislator, for the politician, 
for the social reformer; and its powerful protest against 
all forms of over-legislation, intolerance, and the tyranny 
of majorities, is rich with perennial wisdom and noble 
manliness. But as a piece of social philosophy it is based 
upon a sophism as radical as that of Rousseau himself, 
with his assumption of a primordial Contract. And, if 
these absolute dogmas as to ' the sovereignty of the indi- 
vidual ' against even the moral coercion of his fellow-citi- 
zens were literally enforced, there would be a bar put to 
the moral and religious development of civilised communi- 
ties. Mill has left it exceedingly vague what is the line 
that he draws between t'he 'persuasion,' exhortation, in- 
struction, and apparently even the boycotting, which he 
admits, and the 'moral coercion of public opinion,' which 
he regards as iniquitous. As in the famous trades-union 
cases, it seems to be left to the temper of the judge to 
decide where ' persuasion ' ends and ' moral coercion ' be- 
gins. The real crux, in the problem of individual liberty, 
as in that of 'picketing,' is to decide where lawful 'per- 
suasion' becomes wrongful 'coercion.' And this part of 
the problem Mill has left uncertain and vague. To many 
of us, ' moral ceorcion,' of a wise and guarded sort, may 
become a great engine of progressive civilisation. 

Not only is the language of the Liberty somewhat vague 
in defining the respective limits of 'persuasion ' and 'coer- 
cion,' but the practical illustrations of lawful restrictions 
by the State seem at times hardly consistent with so abso- 
lute a doctrine. It is somewhat startling, after such tren- 
chant assertion of the absolute freedom of the individual, 



JOHN STUART MILL. 17 

to find a defence of the Malthusian laws of some conti- 
nental States, which forbid the marriage of needy adults. 
The vehement language against the 'mischievous act' of 
poor persons in breeding sounds strangely in the mouth 
of an apostle of freedom. And it is even more startling 
to find it preceded by an elaborate plea for * the duty of 
enforcing universal education? the instrument being public 
examinations, extending to all children, and beginning at 
an early age, the parent being punished if the child fails 
to pass. Here is indeed a Chinese tyranny of an ominous 
kind, which is hard to reconcile with the absolute freedom 
of the citizen. Many of us from the first protested against 
State compulsion even in the sacred cause of education, 
and we see the results of it to-day. Hinc illce lacryma — 
ill(E irce — illce rixce — which resound in our midst. The 
result of forcing children into school, cramming them for 
mechanical examination, and fining the parent, has proved 
to be a source of religious bitterness, and the disorganisa- 
tion of 'our public education. 

The root error of ancient States, according to Mill, was 
in their belief ' that the State had a deep interest in the 
whole bodily and mental discipline of every one of its citi- 
zens.' It is quite true that the codes of the ancient com- 
monwealths erred in a monstrous amount of over-legislation 
— (Mulieres genas ne radunto, XII Tab.) — which culmi- 
nated in Plato's Utopian Republic. This primitive error 
Mill would meet by the dogma that the Individual, and 
not the State, is sovereign over all that concerns himself 
alone. The correction is as sophistical and as mischievous 
as the original dogma. The error of the ancient legislators 
lay in their extravagant idea of the State. Put the term 
Society for State, and the doctrine is right. Society has 
a deep interest in the whole bodily and mental discipline 
of every one of its citizens : though it is but a small part 



l8 JOHN STUART MILL. 

of that discipline which the magistrate can enforce or laws 
prescribe, and but a part of it which even Society can influ- 
ence. How to distinguish the one from the other is the 
great problem of Polity, of Ethic, of Religion. And that 
problem Mill has not solved, in spite of all the wise warn- 
ings he impresses on the legislator, and all the courageous 
and inspiring virtue that breathes throughout his essay. 

The little treatise on Utilitarianism was also a compact 
manual of Mill's ethical system, elaborated for years and 
diligently revised. It was begun in 1854, recast and finally 
published in 1861-63. It contains a wonderful amount of 
thought ; it has had a great influence ; and has met with 
incessant criticism and comment. It remains, after all 
deductions and corrections made, far the most ample and 
rational text-book of the principle of Greatest Happiness 
as the foundation of Ethic. It is better reasoned, more 
fully developed, more enlightening and ennobling than 
anything produced by Bentham and his school. If it had 
been wholly detached from the formulas and associations 
of Bentham, if its type of social morality had been worked 
out in ampler forms and made its central doctrine, if it 
had been more purely Mill's own work, and if he had gone 
on to define and expound his own doctrine of Happiness 
— perhaps, if it had borne another title — it would have 
been the most important and effective piece that Mill ever 
produced. 

The worst thing about it is its name — the term which 
Mill himself adopted in order to describe the Benthamite 
principle of the greatest Happiness of the greatest number. 
In spite of all that Bentham, Mill, and their followers have 
said, the ordinary man will continue perversely to associ- 
ate Utility with Expediency, with self-interest, with mate- 
rial value, with practical commodities. It is ignorant, 
unfair, uncandid to do so — but it is human nature. It 



JOHN STUART MILL. 19 

must be admitted that Utilitarianism is a very awkward 
term to describe the pursuit of the highest welfare of 
mankind ; to mean indeed what has been happily called — 
The Service of Man ; and to include all the devotion of 
self to others that we may find in the lives of Alfred, or 
Washington — nay, we must add of Socrates, St. Paul, 
or Christ. Are these the types of utilitarian morality ? 

In substance, Mill's book is a plea for Ethic as being a 
demonstrable science founded on analysis and experience 
of man as a social being eminently adapted to social 
development. When he says that actions are right in 
proportion as they tend to promote Happiness, and that 
by Happiness he means Pleasure, he makes it clear in the 
sequel that he really intends to say, that Happiness, in 
the best sense, is the general and purest welfare of Man- 
kind, and that Pleasure, in the true and highest degree, is 
the satisfaction of man's best instincts of Benevolence and 
Devotion. So understood, the book is a solid and con- 
vincing addition to moral philosophy, in spite of its title 
and its associations. 

The weakness of the argument admittedly lies in the 
want of a more scientific definition of Happiness, and an 
ample exposition of the elements, constitution, and pro- 
duction of Happiness. And an even more serious Jiiatus 
lies in the absence of all these explanations as to Pleasure. 
What constitutes Happiness : how is it created, maintained, 
and lost ? What Pleasures are high, what low : what are 
the qualities of Pleasure, and how should we distinguish 
between them ? It is quite clear that Mill's own concep- 
tion of Happiness is both practical and elevated, reason- 
ably adjusted between each and all ; and that his conception 
of Pleasure is a wise and noble harmony between the per- 
sonal and the altruistic pleasures. But he does not system- 
atically work all this out. He leaves all this in sketch. 



20 JOHN STUART MILL. 

And he does not, therefore, give us a substantive scheme 
of ethical science. 

That Mill's conception of Happiness and of Pleasure is 
of this rational and elevated order appears in his whole 
argument, but especially in that truly grand passage in 
the third chapter, where he claims as the natural basis of 
morality the social feelings of mankind, the desire to-be 
in unity with our fellow-creatures ; and where he goes on 
to show that the social state is the normal destiny, and, 
under civilisation, becomes the instinctive habit of man- 
kind. The true basis of Ethic is that which, with Aris- 
totle, starts with the conception of Happiness as normally 
to be attained by the free development of man's natural 
function, and man's natural function to be fulfilling his 
part as a social being. And Comte has completed that 
view by proving man's natural function to be the system- 
atic control of the personal desires by the benevolent 
instincts, with regard to and by the aid of the entire 
Human Organism. Mill coincides with that theory, and 
is entirely saturated with it ; he certainly urges nothing to 
the contrary. But he has not worked out any theory of 
Ethic so definitely as Comte has done, and indeed as Her- 
bert Spencer has done. 

How Mill himself reconciled the tone of militant Indi- 
vidualism in the Liberty with the tone of enthusiastic 
Altruism of the Utilitarianism he entirely fails to explain 
in his Autobiography, or elsewhere. The two pieces were 
both composed about the same period — that of his short 
married life — and both were published at nearly the same 
date. He was evidently not conscious of any divergence 
of view. Without saying that they are in verbal or direct 
contradiction, or that they do not coincide in many things, 
the paramount importance given to the social feelings as 
the firm foundation of morality does not seem compatible 



JOHN STUART MILL. 21 

with the spirit of the Liberty, which is to assert the 
sovereignty of the individual and the absolute indepen- 
dence of each man and woman. Take this noble passage 
in the third chapter of the Utilitarianism : 

The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual 
to man, that, except in some unusual circumstances or by an effort of 
voluntary abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than as a 
member of a body ; and this association is riveted more and more, as 
mankind are farther removed from the state of savage independence. 
Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society, be- 
comes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception 
of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of 
a human being. . . . 

In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are con- 
stantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a 
feeling of unity with all the rest ; which feeling, if perfect, would 7nake 
him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in 
the benefits of which they are not included. 

This fine burst of altruistic sentiment is as true as it is 
eloquent. It is entirely consistent with Mill's own nature 
and with the facts of his life, and it inspires the whole 
spirit of his Utilitarianism, of which it is the best and cen- 
tral idea. A follower of Comte would even say that the 
altruism is exaggerated in the last cited phrase, and that 
the legitimate claims of Self are ignored. Mill, we know, 
called Comte ' a morality-intoxicated man : every question 
with him is one of morality, and no motive but that of 
morality is permitted.' Potest retorqueri ; for here Mill 
appears as intoxicated — not so much with morality as 
with altruism. But if this fusion of the personal with the 
altruistic feelings is so natural, so complete in a high civi- 
lisation, so essential to the stability of morality, what be- 
comes of the defiant sovereignty of the individual — 'whose 
independence in all that part of conduct which merely con- 



22 JOHN STUART MILL. 

cerns himself is, of right, absolute ? ' In the Utilitarianism 
we are told that a man of high moral culture in a society 
of high civilisation will come to feel about himself, to think 
of himself, not as an isolated individual, but habitually and 
naturally as an organ in a social organism. How are we 
to reconcile the Liberty of Mill with his Utilitarianism ? 

I turn now to the last of his completed books, The Sub- 
jection of Women, 1869 — in many ways the most eloquent 
of his works, the most characteristic, and perhaps that 
which has had the most direct and immediate effect. Like 
the Liberty, it was written many years before it was pub- 
lished, and was to a great degree a joint production. His 
biographer, Professor Bain, very justly calls it 'the most 
sustained exposition of Mill's life-long theme — the abuses 
of power.' And Mr. John Morley calls it 'the best illus- 
tration of all the best and richest qualities of its author's 
mind.' 'It is fortunate,' he adds, 'that a subject of such 
incomparable importance should have been first effectively 
presented for discussion in so worthy and pregnant a form.' 

The form is indeed pregnant, and in every sense worthy 
of a scheme which touches us all home, and reaches so far 
and wide. It is one of those very rare examples of a short 
treatise on a weighty topic, packed with accumulated 
thought, and fused with ardent conviction. In four short 
chapters it condenses a scheme of social Ethics. It is in 
its passionate logic the most ' notable result of this ripest, 
loftiest, most inspiring part of his life.-' And its practical 
effect on legislation, manners, and opinion has no doubt 
been greater than anything else which Mill gave to his 
generation. The law has already been amended on many 
points which drew down his indignation and satire. A great 
number of the disabilities of women arising from prejudice, 
habit, or torpor have been practically removed. At least, 
there remains no legal or moral bar to the aspiring woman, 



JOHN STUART MILL. 23 

except in one or two exceptional cases. Literature, art, 
medicine, science, law, the universities, athletics, sport, 
political agitation, the public service, are now practically 
open to women. Their admission to Parliament, to the 
franchise, to the Bar, to Degrees, is still an open question, 
which would be decided in their favour at once if the 
majority of women seriously resolved to claim it. There 
is nothing now to prevent any woman who wishes it from 
competing with men in composing an epic, playing in a polo 
match, orating on platforms, in building a cathedral, in 
presiding over a hospital, in inspecting a factory, or sitting 
on a parish council and a school board. One or two dis- 
abilities remain, really because many of the best and 
greatest women we have earnestly oppose their removal. 
The change which the present generation has witnessed 
in law, practice, and in opinion is mainly due to the pas- 
sionate school of Reform which Mill inspired, and very 
largely to the little book in which his aspirations were 
concentrated. 

This is no place to discuss how far these changes are 
salutary, for the aim of this brief essay is to call attention 
to the effect of Mill's influence on his age. It is impossi- 
ble to dispute what Mr. Morley justly calls 'the sagacity 
of his maxims on individual conduct and character,' and 
'the beauty of the aspirations for collective social life' in 
this eloquent treatise. There are whole pages which would 
furnish forth a dozen sermons on the coarseness, the 
cruelty, the arrogance which men so often show towards 
women who fall into their power, towards the women of 
their own family, to their sisters, to their daughters, con- 
stantly to their wives, and occasionally even to their 
mothers. It is a scathing indictment : and few men will 
dare to say that they have not known some loathsome 
examples of the brutalities it depicts. And all honest 



24 JOHN STUART MILL. 

men will agree that there are few homes into which this 
insolence of sex does not from time to time intrude; that 
the rebuking- of this temper is indeed a primal duty of 
morality and religion ; that no more powerful sermon on 
this duty has ever been preached by man. 

The Stibjection of Women, however, is not a simple 
sermon against male arrogance. It is a systematic effort 
to recast the whole form of our domestic, social, and politi- 
cal life, and, as such, it must be judged. The real question 
is, not whether the book contains many salutary warnings 
and some noble aspirations, but whether it shows adequate 
ground for a vast revolution in law, opinion, habits, and 
ideals, both of private and of public life. Has civilised 
life between the sexes been based on a selfish tyranny : 
must it be reformed root and branch ? Here some of 
those who honour most the memory of Mill entirely de- 
cline to assent. That he has denounced with a noble 
freedom gross tendencies in our social and domestic life is 
most true. That these tendencies are so enormous, so 
universal, so poisonous as he asserts is a monstrous exag- 
geration. That they can only be overcome by the tre- 
mendous revolution which he preaches is an even more 
dangerous delusion. The subjection of women is a mere 
hysterical sophism in itself. The remedy proposed to cure 
it is rank moral and social anarchy. 

The whole argument is an example of what we know so 
well — the fiery denunciation of some too common failing 
or vice, to be stamped out by some revolutionary process. 
Nearly all that teetotallers say about drunkenness is true ; 
but it does not follow that we need penal laws to prevent 
all mankind from obtaining alcohol. Marriage is not sel- 
dom a cruel purgatory for one or both of the married pair ; 
but it does not follow that all marriages should be termi- 
nable at will or on trivial grounds. There is practised a 



JOHN STUART MILL. 2$ 

great deal of cruelty to brutes and much wanton slaugh- 
ter ; but it does not follow that we ought to make it a 
misdemeanour to hurt or kill a Vertebrate animal, even in 
order to save human life or provide human fopd. Calmly 
judged, and regarded as a serious contribution to sociol- 
ogy, the Subjection of Women partakes of the fanatical ex- 
travagance found in Abolitionists, Vegetarians, and Free 
Lovers. The assertions of fact on which it professes to 
rest its plea are caricatures of practical life of truly gro- 
tesque extravagance. And the results at which it aims 
would logically involve the dissolution of civil and domestic 
existence as civilisation has slowly evolved it. 

It is said to be 'a joint production'; but in truth the 
Subjection of Women is much more the production of a 
woman than of a man. Mill himself was a man with a 
heart of truly feminine sensibility. His heart was even 
richer than his brain. Under the stimulus of indignation 
for the outrages and obstacles of which he saw women to 
be frequent victims, his acute reasoning powers caught 
fire. Indeed, there are purple patches in the book where 
we seem to hear that spiteful wrongheadedness of some 
woman who has grown old in nursing her wrongs, out of 
touch with actual life and with her own sex. These 
Hecubas, whose married life was a failure or who have 
never known it at all, are suffered to rail at male wicked- 
ness with a burlesque exaggeration which disturbs no one, 
and which none disregard so completely as the sensible, 
amiable, average woman. We had hardly got over the 
conventional satire upon Woman which disgraced the age 
of Swift, Pope, and Congreve, when there was founded the 
feminine caricature of Man. And for this new terror to 
quiet life Mr. Mill, with his female inspirers and imitators, 
have to answer at the bar of Good Sense and Good Feel- 
ing. 



26 JOHN STUART MILL. 

A revolution so vast as that involving the mutual rela- 
tions of the sexes is not to be decided by reference to one 
country or one generation. The supposed uprising of 
women against the tyranny of man is still a mere fad in 
the other advanced nations of Europe. And to pretend 
that women are slaves in the United States is too ludicrous 
to be attempted. In what is far the largest part of the 
English-speaking race we are assured that Woman is abso- 
lute mistress of the situation, and Man with shame begins 
to take a lower place. The American girls who so freely 
accept English husbands are not thought by their sisters 
to descend into the ranks of degraded slaves. The 
anomalies of the feudal law which long lingered on our 
statute book, for the most part survivals of antique man- 
ners, were in practice corrected by appropriate modifica- 
tions. It is an instance* of this feminine want of balance, 
of knowledge, and of impartiality, when Mr. Mill calls 
these modifications of the old law ' special contracts 
setting aside the law.' The rules of Equity and the sys- 
tem of settlement are, of course, quite as truly law as the 
old Norman common law ; and, instead of ' setting aside 
the law,' they are improvements in law made by lawyers 
and enforced by judges. It is childish to ask for a change 
which will shake to its foundations every household in 
civilisation, on the ground of an obsolete doctrine which 
survives in the text-books of our old English law, but 
which no longer seriously affects any number of families. 
English law bristles with anomalies under the heads of 
property, family, Church, and State, and we have a dozen 
different types of agitation which propose radical changes 
on the strength of these obsolete and paradoxical anoma- 
lies. It is melancholy to find a great sociologist such as 
Mill heading one more of these rhetorical revolutions. 

Let us guard against misconception, if that be possible, 



* JOHN STUART MILL. 2J 

on this thorny topic. We admit that many changes are 
needed in law, in opinion, in our habits, before all the 
powers of women can be fully developed. There is per- 
manent value in Mill's invectives against male tyranny in 
the past and male arrogance in the present. And his 
impassioned rebukes have much nobility and no little 
truth. But they do not justify the radical sexual revolu- 
tion that he heralds. It would be quite as easy to frame 
a wholesale indictment against the cruelty, selfishness, and 
meanness of women — not in the brutal ways common to 
bad men, but in the feline ways common to bad women. 
There are bad wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, alas ! in 
all ranks, although the bad are not so savage as bad men, 
and the good are often nobler than the best men. Men 
of the world know as many homes made wretched by the 
defects of the women as by the arrogance of the men. 
Selfishness, alas ! is common to both sexes, and is too 
often latent, if it be not blatant, in the average home. It 
takes different forms with men and with women, but there 
is not so much to choose between the secretive selfishness 
of women and the domineering selfishness of men. The 
vices of both are to be met by purer morals, manners, 
religion — not by social revolutions and anarchic experi- 
ments in the New Life. To argue that the arrogance of 
many men requires us to turn our social institutions inside 
out is quite as foolish as it would be to argue that the 
meanness of many women justifies the subjection of 
women as really practised by ancient Romans and modern 
Mussulmans. 

I have no intention whatever of discussing the specific 
changes recommended by Mill ; and it would be idle in 
this place to touch upon problems so vast and so universal. 
The institutions of Family and the relations of the sexes 
concern the whole human race and the general course of 



28 JOHN STUART MILL. 

human civilisation. It is pedantry to debate them from 
the point of view of Britain to-day. A favourite argument 
with some academic debaters founds this vast social revo- 
lution on the slightly greater proportion of women to men 

— a phenomenon in itself trifling, which is due to the acci- 
dents of emigration in the British Empire for the time, but 
which is reversed by similar reasons in the United States 
and some other countries. The famous argument that it 
is impossible to say what women may one day become, 
since for generations they have never had a chance, is too 
much like the pretext of the spiritualists that the pres- 
ence of an incredulous person makes every test unfair. 
A whole generation has now been bred up in the light of 
the new movement that Mill led and inspired ; and few 
of the disabilities he denounced have now any practical 
effect. It is difficult to believe that, in these twenty-seven 
years, women have proved themselves so greatly superior 
to their mothers and their grandmothers, that the passage 
from slavery to freedom has wrought any change so vast 

— or indeed any change at all except a certain perceptible 
loss in tenderness, modesty, and charm/and a very marked 
increase of restlessness, self-assertion, and conceit. 

The specific proposals of the book need not be consid- 
ered whilst it confronts us with the root misconception on 
which it is founded. Women are not a subject race in 
civilised Europe and America, not slaves, not victims : 
and men are not tyrants, jealous task-masters, and inhu- 
man brutes. And the plea for the vast social changes 
involved is founded on the same theory of the Individual 
that is the root error of Liberty. Nothing can be made 
right in sociology whilst society is regarded as made up of 
Individuals instead of Families. If this individualist doc- 
trine is logically carried out, and husband and wife are 
to be but temporary 'partners' with identical rights and 



JOHN STUART MILL. 29 

separate lives, monaogamic marriage as now understood 
must disappear. Mill for once failed in his accustomed 
courage when he shrank from frankly dealing with the 
problem of Marriage. It is certain that he was really pre- 
pared for a very large relaxation of its actual conditions 
and laws. But Marriage is only one of the institutions 
over which these absolute dogmas of individualism would 
cast a blight. The Family as an institution would be 
dissolved ; the fine flower of Womanhood would become 
cankered ; the brutality of Man would become a grim 
reality; and the Subjection of Women would be a fact — 
and not an epigram. 

With all its defects, the book has great beauties, lasting 
merits. All that could be done by a most generous, pure, 
and noble spirit starting with a vicious theory, Mill has 
done. To me it reads like a sermon of St. Bernard on the 
miraculous gifts of the saints, or some other transcenden- 
tal figment. Beautiful and impressive as an occassional 
homily, as philosophy it is vitiated, not only by its meta- 
physical apotheosis of the Individual, but also by unsound 
physiological, cerebral, and ethical data. The truth lies 
not in the equality but in the interdependence of the sexes : 
not in their identities or similarities but in their hetero- 
geneities and correlations. This truth Mill's own beauty 
of soul is continually leading him to affirm, even whilst 
the romance of his personal life is seducing him to adopt 
most extravagant delusions. The co-operation of man 
with woman has never been more finely described than 
in Mill's own statement of the ideal marriage — 'in the 
case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in 
opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that 
best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities 
with reciprocal superiority in them — so that each can 
enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can 



30 JOHN STUART MILL. 

have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led 
in the path of development.' Be it noted that this pict- 
ure is in the very spirit, nay, in the actual words, with 
which Comte has drawn the ideal marriage. This ideal 
is at once the gem of Mill's book on Women — and its 
refutation. It is not, as he fancies, 'the dream of an 
enthusiast.' It is an ideal which is often, even in our 
own day, attained in perfection ; and which they who 
have been blessed in such attainment well know to be 
the normal and natural type to which the relations of 
the two sexes steadily tend to conform, even, to a cer- 
tain extent, in the relations of family, friendship, and 
association, beyond and outside of the marriage union. 
The true function of men and of women is to be the 
complement each of the other. The effort to assimilate 
them is a step towards barbarism. 

This is no place to deal with the great works of Mill's 
earlier life — the Logic and the Political Economy. They 
are still standard works which every student of these 
sciences is bound to master ; they have exercised a really 
dominant influence over the thoughts of the thinking 
world ; and they are doubtless destined to colour the 
minds of many students for some time to come. It is 
true that their authority has been rapidly waning since 
Mill's death ; and they are, perhaps, as much undervalued 
now as they once were unduly extolled as manuals of final 
and absolute truth. Forty years ago these works were 
the text-books of a large and influential school of students ; 
especially at Oxford : and, as is the unhappy fate of text- 
books, they were regarded by the youthful philosopher as 
infallible revelation. This, of course, they are not ; nor 
is either of them the summary of a coherent and com- 
plete system of thought. In the Political Economy es- 
pecially we find two incompatible schemes of thought ; 



JOHN STUART MILL. 31 

and the first and the second volumes of the Logic are not 
wholly consistent throughout. The truth is that Mill, for 
all his apparent proof armour of dry logic, was continually 
moved by what has been called 'the logic of feeling.' 
He was excessively sensitive and indeed impressionable ; 
and was often carried away by new ideas and intense feel- 
ings. In the course of his career he passed through the 
tremendous grinding of Bentham and James Mill's cast- 
iron machine, and ultimately ended in social Utopias and 
sentimental ideals. It was said of the great Condorcet 
that he was a volcano covered with snow. And Mill 
had something of that temperament — without, a method 
of severe logic, within, intense sympathy and aspirations 
after new ideals. Both of these may be traced in most 
of his writings, in antinomies that he failed to harmonise, 
of which he is obviously unconscious himself. 

This is especially marked in the Political Economy, 
which went through three modifications, as has been ex- 
plained by Professor Ingram, who has admirably described 
both its weakness and its strength. It has been, as he 
says, the source from which most of our contemporaries 
have derived their knowledge of the science. And it still 
remains the most important English text-book of the 
older school. It marks an epoch. For, if it cannot be 
said to be the introduction to the new methods with 
which our generation approaches economic problems, it 
undoubtedly closes the canon of the older methods, for 
in its final form, and still more in connexion with Mill's 
later economic doctrines, it makes admissions and en- 
courages ideals of a social future which knock the 
ground from under the feet of the old orthodox school 
of abstract dogmas and unlimited Competition. Of this 
tendency Mill himself was quite aware, and he admitted 
that he had imbibed it in the school of St. Simon and 



32 JOHN STUART MILL. 

Comte. But, if the absence of any coherent scheme is 
a defect in the Political Economy, the fact that it com- 
bines so much of sound reasoning on economics with a 
serious attempt to expand platonomy into sociology, makes 
it the most valuable general treatise which our language 
in this century has produced. 

The Examination of Sir W. Hamilton s Philosophy is 
so full of acuteness, of interest, and of pregnant argument 
as to make one regret that Mill's chief metaphysical work 
should have been cast in a controversial form. It would 
have been far better had he stated his own metaphysical 
position in a systematic body of doctrine. He has not 
altogether satisfied such thinkers of his own school as 
Professor Bain, G. H. Lewes, and Herbert Spencer. Few 
metaphysicians, alas ! ever satisfy any of their fellow phi- 
losophers altogether. But although there is much in this 
most interesting criticism of Hamilton that has not won 
general assent or even a very important following, the 
volume as a whole contains so many characteristic and 
memorable lines of thought, and has so much that is at 
once subtle, and rich with sterling good sense that it is 
especially valuable in this age of Intuitional Reaction and 
in .the welter of half-hearted hypotheses in which we are 
told to-day that true philosophy consists. 

With the work on August e Comte and Positivism I shall 
not deal, for it has been treated so exhaustively by Dr. 
Bridges in his admirable reply, and I have in other places 
dealt with it at such length that I have nothing further to 
add. I associate myself entirely with the whole of Dr. 
Bridges' essay. He has amply shown how very large and 
fundamental are the points of agreement between the two, 
and how deeply Mill has assimilated the philosophical, 
ethical, social, and religious ideas of Comte. Mr. Leslie 
Stephen states it truly when he says, ' Comte's influence 



JOHN STUART MILL. 33 

upon Mill was clearly very great especially in his general 
view of social development.' It has been remarked by 
Professor Bain and by Professor Ingram that Mill had 
been influenced by Comte far more than he was himself 
disposed to believe. Readers of Bain's Life of Mill and 
of Mill's own Autobiography will observe how early, how 
intimate, how profound was the effect of Comte's work 
upon the mind of Mill. The grand difference — j whereon 
they eventually parted company — was that Mill was (in 
theory) an Individualist, whilst Comte was (philosophically 
speaking) a Socialist. To Comte Synthesis was the aim : 
to Mill it was Independence. Both aimed at combining 
Liberty and Duty. But Mill would put Liberty first : 
Comte gave the prerogative place to duty. 

In the supreme point of religious aspiration there is 
essential agreement. It is clear from a concurrence of 
testimony that Mill looked forward to what in his last con- 
siderable piece he describes as 'that real, though purely 
human religion, which sometimes calls itself the Relig- 
ion of Humanity and sometimes that of Duty.' In 
his last interview with John Morley he expressed the 
same thought. The three posthumous Essays on Relig- 
ion develop and expound it. Written at intervals of 
some twenty years, they are not quite consistent, and to 
Bain and Morley they present certain difficulties hard 
to reconcile with each other and with their knowledge of 
the writer. The last essay on Theism admits, in a loose 
and sentimental way, a certain concurrent and purely hypo- 
thetical Theism as likely to aid and colour the Religion of 
Duty. This Comte himself certainly did not contemplate, 
and all Christians and most Theists would reject it with 
scorn. But Mill's religion was not after Comte's model, 
though it virtually amounted to the same result. Fairly 
considered, the three posthumous Essays on Religion do 

D 



34 JOHN STUART MILL. 

not vary more than the development of a single mind over 
twenty. .years may explain. Thev combine to surrender all 
forms of belief in the Supern ttural, in Revelation, or 
Christianity, and they practically close with a definite 
acceptance of the Religion of Humanity, as in some 
form or other the permanent religion of the Future. 

With Mill's political activity and his writings on politics 
we are not now concerned. They belong to his own genera- 
tion, not to ours. And, however rich with light and lead- 
ing to the movements which they founded or inspired, 
their effect was in no sense either so great or so perma- 
nent as that of his books. His whole conduct in public 
was that of a courageous, conscientious, and noble-minded 
citizen, who gave his .countrymen a rare example of how 
to play that most perilous of all parts — the philosopher as 
ruler. Whether we agree or not with all his aims, his 
bearing was always a combination of patience, justice, a 
lofty morality, and unflinching courage. 

In summing up the peculiar powers of Mill and his 
special services to English thought, it would seem that 
his work marks a certain transition or combination between 
two very different movements, and also the return to the 
fusion between French and English ideas. Hume, Gibbon, 
Priestley, Godwin, and Bentham, with the societies around 
them, had saturated Englishmen with the philosophical 
and political ideas of France. Scott, Coleridge, and 
Carlyle saturated them with German romanticism and 
philosophy. The influence of Mill again was almost 
wholly French, and to a very small degree German. In 
spite of the formal reasoning of his method, and the labo- 
rious precision of his form, he can hardly claim the highest 
rank as an original, or systematic, thinker. He is neither 
so original nor so systematic as Bentham or Spencer. And 
nearly all his work shows evidence of competing currents 



JOHN STUART MILL. 35 

which are far from completely harmonised. His social 
philosophy is made up of Bentham and Comte, his Eco- 
nomics of Plutonomy V pered by Socialism, his Meta- 
physics are based, either by agreement or antagonism, 
on Sir W. Hamilton. His Liberty is deeply coloured by 
the memory of his father, and the Subjection of Women 
is an echo of his romantic devotion to his wife. 

Yet as one turns over the roll of Mill's labours in phi- 
losophy, in metaphysics, in ethic, in economics, in sociol- 
ogy, in politics, in religion, it is difficult to believe but 
that such solid achievement will have a permanent place 
in English thought, although it may never regain its orig- 
inal vogue. In any case the name of Mill must stand as 
the most important name in English philosophy between 
Bentham and Spencer. But, to the diminishing band of 
those who knew him, it will be his nobility of nature which 
dwells deepest in their memory, rather than his sagacity 
of mind. And those who did not know him should read 
in his Autobiography the modest yet resolute presentment 
of a life of indefatigable industry, conscientious effort, and 
beautiful ideals. The sensitiveness to social improvement 
and the passionate nature of his own affections, which led 
him so to exaggerate the gifts of his own dear ones, and 
to plunge into such social revolutions, not seldom over- 
powered his science and involved him in inconsistencies, 
little to be expected from the external form of logical and 
patient induction. The inconsistencies and sophisms will 
be forgotten, as his great services to thought and his sym- 
pathetic trust in humanity are more and more remembered 
and prized. 



JOHN STUART MILL 



BY 



FREDERIC HARRISON 






THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 

1896 

All rights reserved 









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